For more than eight decades Allentown's downtown skyline consisted of the PPL Tower dwarfing a collection of unidentifiable buildings that surround it.

City Center Investment Corp. CEO J.B. Reilly on Wednesday said he wants to change that.

The 15-story Five City Center would not only stretch 260 feet into the Allentown skyline, but at $130 million and 300,000 square feet, it also would be perhaps the largest private development project the city has ever seen.

Spanning an entire block of Walnut Street, the complex is to include the 15-story office complex at Seventh Street, plus a 600-space parking deck with 200 upscale apartments on the upper floors at Eighth Street.

With a tiered design similar to the PPL Tower and the Empire State Building, Five City Center would be the biggest project yet from the downtown developers who have specialized in big. With several office buildings, restaurants, retail shops and a hotel already under construction, City Center Investment is building more that $400 million in new projects, but none that will change the landscape quite like this one.

"We designed this to be toweresque, a real signature building for downtown Allentown," Reilly said. "You'll be able to see it from MacArthur Road. In a lot of ways, it will provide a balance to the PPL Tower. Defining the skyline is critical in establishing Allentown as the center of the Lehigh Valley and the third largest city in the state."

The project got unanimous approval Wednesday from the Allentown Neighborhood Improvement Zone Development Authority's project review committee and is expected to get easy passage next month from the full board. For ANIZDA, a project that's expected to create 500 construction jobs, while bringing another 1,000 office workers and 300 residents downtown, seems almost too good to be true.

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO, THE MORNING CALL

An artist's rendering of the proposed 15-story 5 City Center on Walnut Street between Seventh and Eighth streets in downtown Allentown.

An artist's rendering of the proposed 15-story 5 City Center on Walnut Street between Seventh and Eighth streets in downtown Allentown. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO, THE MORNING CALL)

"This is all extremely exciting. Everybody wants it to move forward," ANIZDA board member Robert Lovett said. "It's so good, you start to worry when the black swan will come out."

But residents of the neighborhood worry it's too big. Ce-Ce Gerlach, secretary of the Third Ward Neighborhood Group and lives at Ninth and Walnut streets, fears it will cast a literal and figurative shadow over her neighborhood.

"I don't know that a 15-story building is going to mesh well with a residential neighborhood," Gerlach said. "But no one has asked us what we think."

Resigned that the development is coming, Gerlach is requesting that 10 percent of the apartments be set aside for low-to-moderate tenants whose incomes are more in line with the residents of her neighborhood.

That's an issue that wasn't discussed before ANIZDA, in part, because Reilly said he has not signed any office, retail or apartment tenants. Because his other projects are filling up fast, he said he needs to begin getting approvals now, so construction can begin next year, enabling the project to begin opening in late 2016 or 2017.

"If we don't move forward with planning right now, there will be opportunities that we can't take advantage of," he said. "We're going to be out of product to sell in six to eight months."

According to plans laid out Wednesday, the office tower would be at Seventh and Walnut, just behind the Wells Fargo building at Center Square. The glass and brick tower, with 176 underground parking spaces and retail shops slated for the first floor, is to have 300,000 square feet of office space and a four-story decorative steel spire on the roof that would give the building the height of 19 stories. At 260 feet, it would be the second tallest building in Allentown, trailing only the 322-foot, 23-story PPL Tower two blocks away.

Extending west from the office tower is to be a nine-story brick-face complex, at Eighth and Walnut, with four stories of 600 parking spaces beneath 200 upscale apartments. The building, with a cornerstone commemorating the 110-year-old former Elks Lodge demolished to make way for the project, will include retail shops along Eighth Street.

Reilly said the parking and apartment complex will be built first, with construction beginning as early as June, so it can provide parking for 200 workers whose surface lot will be displaced when the tower is built.

Tower construction will come next, perhaps in early 2016, he said. Though the tower is tentatively set at 15 stories, Reilly said its ultimate height could be determined by how many tenants he can sign by then.

The new property is the latest in a growing collection of more than 40 now owned by City Center. The company, launched in 2011 to take advantage of Allentown's 127-acre Neighborhood Improvement Zone, where most local and state taxes can be used by the owners to improve or rebuild their properties with job-creating projects, is in the midst of nearly a half-billion dollars' worth of new developments downtown.

City Center's projects include the Allentown Renaissance Hotel by Marriott and a Lehigh Valley Health Network sports and fitness center — both attached to the 8,500-seat PPL Center hockey arena owned by the arena authority. City Center also built the 11-story National Penn Bank headquarters, called Two City Center, that opened last year, and is building another Hamilton Street office complex called Three City Center.

Add to that a 170-unit upscale apartment complex called Strata and a collection of smaller retail shops and restaurants.

While heaping much the same praise as his colleagues, project review committee Chairman Alan Jennings said ANIZDA should not lose sight that its mission is the rebirth of all of Allentown, including the struggling neighborhoods around the NIZ.

"Our true measure of success will be when the first project is built outside the NIZ," Jennings said. "Success will be seeing the first development that doesn't need NIZ help."

"I think next year is going to be a big year for that. Homes will be renovated. Things will begin changing," Reilly said. "I expect big things next year."